Project information

Research project’s title: Minyans and Trojans in the Middle Bronze Age (MITAMBA): multi-scale networks in the northern Aegean
Project No: NCN 2023/50/E/HS3/00578
Project financing: Narodowe Centrum Nauki, SONATA BIS-13 competition
Keywords: production, consumption, and distribution networks; chemical analysis; petrography; experimental archaeology; morphometrics
Project lead: Christopher Mark Hale
Project lead, institutional: Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology of the Polish Academy of Sciences

Description:

MITAMBA investigates the connections between central Greece and the northern Aegean during the Middle Bronze Age (MBA, ca. 2100—1550 BCE). This region has often been viewed as peripheral to the contemporary networks centered on Crete, the Cycladic islands, Aegina, and the southern Greek mainland. Nevertheless, there are signs of significant long-distance links, such as the introduction of the potters’ wheel from northwestern Anatolia to central Greece at the end of the Early Bronze Age (Rutter 1979; 2008; Choleva 2018; 2020) or the notable technological similarities, along with central Greek typologies, among certain pottery types found along the coast of northwestern Anatolia and in central Macedonia during the later MBA (Pavúk 2007; 2008; 2010; Horejs 2007a; 2007b). However, the materials representing these phenomena have rarely undergone analytical examination, often leaving their origins uncertain and the dynamics unclear. Similarly, occasional parallels have been observed across broader material culture (including chipped stone tools, weaving equipment, and architecture), suggesting largely unexplored connections beyond pottery production and consumption.

MITAMBA hypothesizes that some MBA communities throughout these regions were variously connected, and that these links can be identified through similarities or regionalisms in the production, consumption, and distribution of material culture. These links may have ebbed and flowed due to a myriad of factors, such as the appearance or disappearance of important nodes, the advent of important innovations in transportation technologies, or shifts in wider regional networks. Exploring these connections is crucial to properly understand this region’s role as a potential intermediary between the southern Aegean and places like central and eastern Europe or northwestern Anatolia.

With resources for new sampling and analytical examinations, the cataloguing of important assemblages, network and chronological modelling, experimental archaeology, and investigations of morphometrics and use-wear, MITAMBA brings together a range of expertise to produce insights allowing central Greece and the northern Aegean to be considered within inter-regional dynamics and with new perspective.
Interested in contributing or collaborating? Contact c.hale(at)iaepan.edu.pl

Latest activities:

12/06/2025:
MITAMBA PI Christopher Hale and Bartłomiej Lis (IAE PAN) presented a paper titled “Re-Evaluating Central Euboean Middle Bronze Age Pottery Production and Distribution” at the Spaces and Landscapes of Production in the Aegean World and Beyond workshop organized by Sylviane Déderix and Stephanie Aulsebrook at the University of Warsaw.
This paper used new neutron activation analysis results to argue that central Euboean pottery production in the Middle Bronze Age was far more intensive and had a far greater distribution than previously understood. For MITAMBA, this raises the significant possibility that many so-called “True Grey Minyan” pots known throughout central Greece, and occasionally identified at some island and coastal sites in the northern Aegean, could be central Euboean imports. This requires more sampling and future investigations.

08/06/2025:
Salvatore Vitale (University of Pisa) and MITAMBA PI Christopher Hale presented a paper titled “Bridging Sequences: Northeast Peloponnese Deposits as Proxies for LM IA-LH I Synchronisms between Crete and Central Greece” at the Reconsidering LM IA Pottery Sequences and Chronologies workshop organized by Emilia Oddo and Iro Mathioudaki at the INSTAP Study Centre in Pacheia Ammos on Crete.
This paper synchronized the emerging Central Greece Late Helladic I pottery sequence as represented at Mitrou in East Lokris with the better known sequences in the southern Aegean. In doing so, one of MITAMBA’s core regions can now be linked to a much more established regional relative chronological framework at the end of the MBA and the early LBA, allowing a better understanding of diachronic developments and their importance.

11/04/2025:
MITAMBA PI Christopher Hale and Johannes H. Sterba (Technical University of Vienna) published the open access paper “From Pottery Provenance to Multiscale Diachronic Connectivity at Middle Bronze Age Mitrou, Greece” in the European Journal of Archaeology.
While the paper is focused on connectivity between central Greece and the southern Aegean, some important neutron activation analysis groups point to northern links, such as with Magnesia or Thessaly. Some small unlocated groups hint at links elsewhere, perhaps to the northern Aegean, but further investigations are required.